in the long run to be Lord Grasmere. I had remained stolid under
this information, feelingly imparted by Aunt Jane. I had refused
to ask questions about High Staunton Manor. For already there was
a vast amount of superfluous chaperoning being done. I couldn't
speak to the b. y.--which is short for beautiful youth--without
Violet's cold gray eye being trained upon us. And Aunt Jane grew
flustered directly, and I could see her planning an embroidery
design of coronets, or whatever is the proper headgear of barons,
for my trousseau. Mr. Tubbs had essayed to be facetious on the
matter, but I had coldly quenched him.

But Mr. Shaw was much the worst. My most innocent remark to the
beautiful youth appeared to rouse suspicion in his self-constituted
guardian. If he did not say in so many words, _Beware, dear lad,
she's stringing you_! or whatever the English of that is, it was
because nobody could so wound the faith in the b. y.'s candid eyes.
But to see the fluttering, anxious wing the Scotchman tried to
spread over that babe of six-feet-two you would have thought me a
man-eating tigress. And I laughed, and flaunted my indifference in
his sober face, and went away with bitten lips to the hammock they
had swung for me among the palms--

The Honorable Cuthbert had a voice, a big, rich, ringing baritone
like floods of golden honey. He had also a ridiculous little
ukulele, on which he accompanied himself with a rhythmic strumming.
When, like the sudden falling of a curtain, dusky, velvet,
star-spangled, the wonderful tropic night came down, we used to
build a little fire upon the beach and sit around it. Then
Cuthbert Vane would sing. Of all his repertory, made up of
music-hall ditties, American ragtime, and sweet old half-forgotten